Shaming an internet celebrity

Annals of public humiliation

GUO MEIMEI had often featured in Chinese media, but her appearance on China Central Television (CCTV) on August 4th was different. A gifted self-publicist, the 23-year-old had once liked to flaunt designer handbags, pose by Maseratis and post selfies from tropical locales on social media. The broadcast showed Ms Guo wearing an orange prison-vest. She is the latest in a string of high-profile figures to confess to crimes on CCTV, a state broadcaster, before standing trial.

A familiar pattern has been established. Led out by police, the handcuffed suspect makes a statement in which they show remorse and typically blame the crime on some moral defect. Chen Yongzhou, a former journalist who was arrested for corruption last year, said he had taken bribes because he “hankered after money and fame”. Before his arrest for hiring prostitutes Charles Xue, a Chinese-American venture capitalist with a large following on social media, was known for his outspoken comments on social or political issues. In a confession broadcast last September Mr Xue said he had felt like an emperor of the internet. Ms Guo, who confessed to prostituting herself and gambling, said she had made a “huge mistake” as a result of her vanity.

In the Mao era public self-criticisms were commonplace. Criminal trials were then little more than judicial theatre aimed at educating the public. As a demonstration of state power the confessions were often visibly coerced. Since the late 1980s, however, public humiliations of suspects and convicts have become rarer. The central government itself has called for an end to such shaming. Occasional relapses by the police have usually involved petty criminals; until recently celebrities or the well-connected were rarely subjected to such treatment. The Communist Party, however, is now eager to show that no-one is above the law. A handful of recent public shamings of better-off white-collar suspects, even before their conviction, appear aimed at making this point.

Ms Guo was an obvious target. She became embroiled in a scandal in 2011 for posting photos of her lavish lifestyle online while claiming to be a manager at the Red Cross Chamber of Commerce. (The organisation does not exist.) Her microblog galvanised a public already bitter about China’s widening inequality. People accused the Red Cross Society of China, a state-backed charity, of squandering funds. Though Ms Guo later admitted to fabricating her job title, the damage had been done. One of the centrepieces of her confession on CCTV was an apology for “seriously destroying” the charity’s reputation.

Yet if Ms Guo’s confession was a top-down effort to salvage the charity’s name—as microblog users suspected—the timing and execution proved ill-conceived. In what seemed a coordinated effort, state media reports about Ms Guo came thick and fast just eight hours after an earthquake devastated Ludian county in the southern province of Yunnan, killing more than 600 people. One unfortunate headline from Xinhua, a government news agency, read: “From ostentation to gambling—why did she fall into the criminal abyss?” Internet users were incensed that the news about Ms Guo trumped reports of both the earthquake and of a fatal blast at a factory the day before. Initial orders sent to state media outlets to “prominently display” Ms Guo’s CCTV appearance were hastily withdrawn, according to instructions leaked to China Digital Times. Ms Guo may not have been a saint. But her treatment is a further blow to the rights of individuals.